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In Auroville, we live to create Beauty. We aspire for Beauty….We work for Beauty….We seek to see the Beauty in All. Beauty is not simply something nice to experience or look upon, but is something that has the power to Transform everything, to Heal….it is the Soul-Partner of Love.

Beauty can be found in so many forms in Life….and in Nature it is found most profoundly, when we stop and observe, listen, Feel it. The Beauty of Gardens has been explored throughout the history of the world in various ways. In Japan, the Art of Garden-making has become something that seeks to inspire not only a sense of Beauty and Harmony, but also something Deeper, a Spiritual Connection with the Earth and Nature.

The Labyrinth at Auroville Botanical Gardens

In the Auroville Botanical Gardens, we work to inspire a new Spirit and Consciousness, this sense of Beauty and Harmony, into the world around us, into the material world that we are a part of. It is an Inner Journey first, but also one that informs our Outer Experience. Over 15 years many people have worked on the land in this place in South India where people from around the world come to experience Something Else….to build Human Unity and Peace in the world by building a city and experimenting with ourselves, our Spiritual and Material worlds. We have played with Nature and explored its Spirit, and yet still there is much to awaken….

Japanese Garden of Peace Design

Recently we have aspired to build a Japanese Garden of Peace here in our Botanical Gardens. Our fellow Japanese Aurovilian Jyoti has designed a wonderful Garden for us and we have found just the right location to put it. It will take much work, many hands and hearts, to create it….and also, of course, money. As we Aurovilians who choose to live as full-time volunteers and offer our lives to build a world not based upon profit but upon creating Beauty and Peace, we need the help of others to build everything here…..So we reach out to all of you who may have a Love for Gardens, for Gardens that will educate and Inspire children and adults and people from around the world….we reach out to you for the help to build this Japanese Garden of Peace. We invite you to visit our Indiegogo Campaign Page at http://igg.me/at/japanesegarden/x/12519715 where you can see videos, pictures, and find out more detailed information about our special project. We hope you will find a way to support this project in any way you are able. Please share this with others in your social media world and inspire others to build Peace in new ways.

Japanese Garden of Peace Design

In a world so full of tension and violence, we truly need more actions and creations that will Inspire Peace and Unity between us all. Love and Light.

Nature has always been the traveling partner of spiritual seekers along their

Name: Spiritual Power of Healing

journey towards enlightenment. Throughout religious history, even the great Spiritual Masters found their Way with the help of Nature. The Buddha is known to have attained enlightenment while meditating under a Bodhi Tree, while Jesus also went into the desert for forty days and forty nights where he found his own spiritual victory. Today’s spiritual seekers are no less drawn towards Nature as a place to find inner peace and silence, as a retreat and refuge away from the constant activity and chaos of modern life. One finds that the energy and Spirit of nature draws one deeper within oneself, or beyond oneself, and inspires one to be more receptive to the contemplation of Existence and the meaning of Life. It allows us an opportunity to connect more intimately with our inner Self and with the Divine, with God. There is an undeniable Divine Presence in Nature, which holds the power to awaken us not only to the beauty around us in the world and life, but also in ourselves. This truth becomes even more evident and palpable when we gaze into the spiritual power and significance of flowers.

As someone who has worked closely with flowers in spiritually inspired gardens that vibrate with a mystical Force, I have experienced first-hand the power that flowers have to influence and change one’s inner nature. Flowers are, in their very essence, concentrated Consciousness, as everything in life is. All of life lives and breathes by this Divine Consciousness which animates everything. It breathes just as much in nature and in the rock as in us humans, only in different ways. And it breathes in flowers as well. When we are able to understand the innate and inborn Connection between what we call God, the Divine, Spirit, and the very material, physical life of Nature that we have manifested from, then we can begin to see the unity between ourselves and Nature also. We can begin to find a connection to the Divine in all of life, and especially in Nature and flowers.

Name: Divine Smile

There lies within flowers a deep power for healing and transformation. Their power is not merely a symbolic representation of a quality of life, not merely a tool to express what we feel inside us, but rather is an actual force of material Consciousness which is held within the vibration of their physical existence. They vibrate an Essence which is pure and true to their existence, their own unique self-truth, which is inherently connected to a vaster Spiritual and Divine Truth, their Source and Being – which is our Source and Being as well. The healing power of flowers lies not only in their scent or their oils or external beauty, all of which have been used for ages in aromatic and other healing therapies, but also in their very material vibration and spiritual consciousness. When we meditate and concentrate upon their nature, flowers can evoke within us the qualities of consciousness which they hold within them, and which lie deep within us as well, hidden from our own awareness by all the veils of false perceptions, ignorance, doubts, confusions, and all the other inner obstacles we confront within ourselves as we seek to know better who we truly are, where we come from, and where we are going. When we allow ourselves the opportunity to truly BE with a flower, to meditate and concentrate with it, we can open ourselves to experiencing the truth which that flower is bringing into the Earth consciousness, including ourselves. Our intention to open to the truth of the flower is like a bridge being built between ourselves, our consciousness, and the essence of the flower, the consciousness of the flower. Our own Energy reaches out to the Energy of the flower, and receives what it has to offer us through the innate Unity that exists between us and Nature, and the Divine that dwells within All.

During the last century, a wise and enlightened being by the name of Mirra Alfassa,

Name: Beauty of Attachment to the Divine

a French woman of Egyptian andTurkish descent, known lovingly as the Mother in the Sri Aurobindo Ashram in India, identified the spiritual names of over 900 flowers during her life before she left her body in 1973. She also envisioned and began the building of an international township called Auroville, which currently includes a central park area with many gardens whose sole purpose is to inspire and awaken the healing, transformation, and evolution of human Consciousness towards a more Divine Life. As a gardener who worked in these gardens of Auroville, I have experienced directly the divine Grace that works through the diverse life of flowers. I was previously in my life never interested in flowers, but as I worked more closely with the Earth and the beautiful flora and fauna around me, I realized what a blessing it is to know and experience the significance of these flowers, and to understand their power to aid our personal healing and spiritual transformation. I recently visited one of my favorite trees, the Champaca, which has an extremely aromatic flower. The spiritual significance of this particular type of Champaca flower is Divine Smile. And, indeed, when one takes in the strong aroma of this delicate flower one can sense and feel the energy change within oneself and evoke a definite smile into one’s being, even into the body’s cells. One may not think that a smile might be healing, but they truly are, and the power of a Divine Smile, a profoundly powerful smile which radiates throughout all of existence, behind everything and everyone in every moment, is a powerful truth which can be experienced in our own conscious depths. It is transformational to realize this within oneself, and a flower holds a great opportunity for us to grow in the experience of this.

There are so many flowers which can help one to connect with a greater sense of oneself and healing. They are powerful tools to explore and experiment with, to discover more about one’s own inner nature and even unlock secret qualities of life that one might not have experienced about oneself before. For those who wish for more direct healing power, perhaps the Petrea shrub, also known as Spiritual Power of Healing, might be of interest. Or, if one has some sweet basil in one’ garden, then one could take the moment to connect with this flower’s Joy of Union With the Divine. As we seek healing, however, we must remember that the healing power of flowers is not only limited to healing our bodies of illness or disease, but also healing on all the planes of our being – mental, emotional/vital, physical, cellular, spiritual and beyond. It is our openness and willingness to experiment and explore the nature of flowers which will ultimately give us our own living experience of their power of healing, and even more importantly, of our own healing powers.